


like clockwork

by kuro49



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 14:16:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17664221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: In the aftermath of a Batman who kills, Bruce's reparation is years in the making. This is the days before, the day of, and all the days after where Jason waits with bated breath for him.





	like clockwork

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marourin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marourin/gifts).



> marourin: all the good ideas  
> me: conjugal visittttttt
> 
> this is definitely not the prison!au i thought i would write but again, here we are. i am also trying a bit of a different style with this and i'm not 100% sure how much i like it so feedback would be awesome. thank you to Anonymoss Lawyer on discord for helping out with such a fast round of quality beta <3 
> 
> and ofc, happy chinese new year!!! :DD

 

 

The days before.

Batman kills Joker.

Maintains pressure until his throat is crushed and his neck is snapped. Blood from his mouth, red on red on powdery white.

People say, here he goes, that blinding rage, contained for so long and warped so far out of shape. People say they saw it coming but not quite on a scale like this, calling it an inevitability just like how the sun sets in the west.

People say a lot of things. Not all of it right, but not all of it wrong, when.

 

Next goes the Penguin. Then Scarecrow and Firefly and Two-Face and Bane and Hush and Professor Pyg and Flamingo, and—

The list is long, the work is quick. The days are short where the shadows stretch into disproportionate shapes. The nights drag on, and a city with its villains in fear is a city held hostage in Batman's claim to rage.

Even if it is no way to live, Jason argues, a city in fear is a city still alive.

Their deaths come in swift, clean kills. And nowhere as painful as they truly deserve. But nothing comes close to a death like his own, a close range explosion across his skin, the crippling pain of the blunt end of a crowbar going dull against the split of his flesh and down to the marrow of his bones. The green that leeches into every crevices of his head after that didn't quite lend a helping hand either. 

They draw a line in the difference of opinions. Securing a future in a world with none. This is what Jason wanted. His wish in its most primal form, taking shape when it is stripped of bravado and reduced down to the most basic structure.

 

Inside the husk that remains of a Batman that kills, Bruce Wayne is a changed man.

 

 

The days after the days before.

"You knew what it would do to you, and you still did it," Jason says.

There is a question in there, somewhere, that isn't being asked.

"I couldn't prove it to you any other way," Bruce replies.

And there is an answer here, somewhere, that isn't being said.

"You're Batman." Jason tells him. "Isn't there always another way?"

"It was either blood on your hands or blood on mine. I wasn't going to make any other choice."

The absolutes that Batman doles out is very much a flimsy joke. They don't live in the black and white. It's grey all around. It is what the old man preaches and Jason knows every counter argument in this conversation but wanting crosses a line into knowing that the man with the infallible moral compass broke every last rule for him.

"You've always been self-sacrificing, B. But you were never stupid, so stop pretending that you are." A boyish laugh, one hollowed out in the center until the mirth is sharp enough to cut with. "You taught me this yourself, to be prepared. You taught _Robin_ this. I was ready to do anything when I came back to Gotham. A little blood on my hands is nothing, I killed long before I came home to you. So, what is this _really_ about?"

"If I thought killing would solve everything, Jason. I would've started killing a long time ago."

Jason gets everything he wants. He also gets nothing that he wants when the Bruce that stands before him is a man splintered right down the center.

"So, this is to prove me wrong." Jason smiles cruelly because this is what he knows, that they are alone in this. Now, they are truly even. "We make quite the matching set, B."

Bruce's own smile is pass the point of painful, coming full circle to an understanding that Jason isn't sure he has a clear mind to put together on his best days. They are both a little off on their game when it's been two weeks since Batman disappeared from the Gotham skyline after dark in preparation of what's to come.

 

 

The days leading up.

"Have you actually lost your mind, old man?"

Bruce's plans are laid out in plain sight. A private company under a name that is distinctly not Wayne Enterprise. Bruce's name on enough of the paperwork to rouse suspicion and a neatly put together puzzle that has been close to a year in the making for a clean cut conviction.

"Never clinically proven."

Placed on a timeline, it all makes sense. It is intended to even for the dumbest of the cops in the GCPD.

"So what is this supposed to be, B? Some kind of punishment?"

Jason sees the list of the investors, knows the dirty money that build the empire behind these names. Puts one and one together to make a clear two when the careful documentation makes claims on Bruce's position on WE's board of directors in name only, outlines how he was voted out of actual executive decisions years ago.

"I need to pay for what I've done, Jason."

"You did the right thing." He goes repeating himself, the argument old with them both worn and resigned to it. And he will continue doing so because no one else will. “You did a good thing.”

“It is still premeditated murder and whatever sentence I can get for this, I should be getting life.”

"So that's what this is?" Jason is older than the Robin that came up to Bruce's waist, and time is not kinder but it passes. He feels his skin going tighter, his voice going out softer as he holds all of that emotion inside of himself so he doesn't lash out in anything except for words. "You can't punish me, so you'll punish yourself?"

"This has nothing to do with you." This isn't the entire truth, not when they both know this has always been Jason's crusade to start. Bruce just ended it with a finality that doesn't allow life to be breathe back into it. "I need to do this for myself."

"But what about me?" Jason asks, finally, his gaze hard, eyes looking like shards of broken glass scattered underneath a burning sun.

 

When news of Brucie Wayne's Ponzi scheme leaks to the media, for a lack of a better descriptor, it blows up.

Bruce doesn't flinch. Instead, he goes easy, shoulders dropping, tension releasing from under the lifted weight of it all. And Jason, he cannot begrudge him for that.

 

 

The day.

The trial is over before it barely even starts.

Bruce Wayne pleads guilty on all charges.

The man is sentenced to twelve long years.

 

(He serves all of them.)

 

 

A day.

“If I didn't ask, would you've done it?” Jason has one hand holding the phone receiver up to his ear while the other twists itself into a fist in his lap. Bruce doesn't see that, he can't see that. On the other side of the glass, Bruce Wayne looks at peace.

“Probably not.”

That's not an answer, he wants to say. But he is also being unfair. He tries again.

“Do you regret it then?”

“That's not a fair question, Jason.”

The answer is _yes_ and if asked if he would do it again, the answer is still _yes_ even if the logic of the situation is that you do not redo what you regret. The orange jumpsuit looks good on Bruce. Because of _course_ , it would.

“I can't figure you out, B.”

There is no fear gas attack or elaborate midtown bank heists by men in clown masks. There aren't even missing people turning up as some mindless disfigured dolls stitched up in some sick little collage of human skin. But crime continues like a well-tuned machine, one gear turning the next, one man filling a dead man's shoes in the power vacuum.

“But I've figured you out, Jason. I would've lost you for good if I didn't go through with it.” Bruce tells him, and he is not in a confessional but the truth remains the same. "I lost you once, I failed you badly. What I say didn't matter if I couldn't show you I was willing to do anything to convince you otherwise."

“And now?”

“Now?” Bruce smiles, through the thick panes of glass, his voice doesn't break into static over the phone. “You're here to see me every week and I can't ask for more.”

Jason doesn't know how to respond to that, knows Bruce can see the request in the way he doesn't look away, thinking, _say it, Bruce, just say the word and I can get you out_.

But he never does.

"So, Jason." Bruce's smile is one Jason recognizes from when he was younger, when he was Robin with magic that got even the Batman laughing. "Tell me about how the family is doing."

 

 

Yesterday.

"You're moving up in the world, huh?"

They are sitting across from one another, the metal table between them bolted down into the concrete floor. But Jason doesn't just mean the lack of two-inch thick glass between them. He also means the bandages neatly wrapping up Bruce's hands.

"You might not believe it," Bruce chuckles, flexing his fingers bound in white, showing them off like they are battle scars, "but peeling potatoes is nowhere as easy as they try to teach you."

And in any other scenario, Jason wouldn't.

But he can believe it when it is Brucie Wayne sitting across from him, playing up the part of an eccentric billionaire playboy with an acquired taste for white collar crime. The fact that Jason also has direct access into the prison's security feeds allows him to take Bruce's words at face value when he sat at his own shoddy version of the batcomputer to watch Bruce butcher a bucket of potatoes when he was assigned kitchen duty for what is probably the first and last time.

Jason almost wishes it had been a fist fight so he gets the excuse Bruce is unwilling to give up.

"How's everyone doing?" Bruce tilts his head, putting his chin in a propped up hand and settles in to ask that same question he's asked since the first visit Jason's made in person.

Jason doesn't point out that this isn't fair, that Bruce's genuine interest keeps him going back to the manor out of some misplaced obligation to give a report at the end of the week. It is Bruce forcing his hand even when he doesn't lay a finger on him. Jason never intended to get himself tangled this far into the grapevines of the family.

"—and Alfred, he's good, he is talking about going on a vacation, thinking Europe, maybe along the south west coast of England, but for sure making a trip to Germany to see the wall."

"Alfred is finally willing to go on a vacation?" Bruce asks, for propriety's sake because they both know this is the furthest thing from the truth.

Unlike Damian's healing ankle from a soccer game a few days ago that has him laid up in bed, Cassandra's delay in returning home due to a rescheduled performance with her ballet company in Hong Kong, Tim's new merger that has him flying to San Francisco the day after tomorrow, or even Dick's new job that has him moving back into town. Here, the bits and pieces of the truth are conveyed in glimpses obscured in a universe of what-could-have-been if they aren't who they are living in a reality that the Batman mantle has been laid down to rest for good.

It is his way of telling Bruce the adjustments being made in his absence. How he remains a topic they talk around at the dinner table when the silence gets too much, and how they are still coming to terms with what was done when a man that's snapped isn't quite as convincing of a story to spin to the people that know him.

At the same time, Jason carries on another conversation in the faint taps of his fingertip against the flat of the metal tabletop, knows Bruce to be following when his eyes drift from his eyes to his mouth to his hands and back.

b-r-e-a-k-o-u-t

Bruce's hands stay resolutely still. Steady in its reply.

And that's probably an answer in and of itself. But Jason doesn't really care, Bruce's hands are tied here. When their allotted time is up, Jason gets up to leave, a thin smile pulling tightly at his mouth, his hand raised in a half-wave.

"I'll see you tomorrow again, probably around noon."

 

 

Today.

Escape is easy. Running is too.

But Bruce never is and this is also why the southwest wall of the penitentiary's recreation room is blown wide open but Jason is standing alone like a common lackey in the dust and the debris, in head to toe black and with a balaclava covering his entire face. Arkham Penitentiary has a joke of a security when you aren't looking to bypass security at all.

"Fuck you, B." He says to no one.

The high noon leaves sweat trickling down his back, he hates that he isn't even surprised.

 

The dilemma is plenty here if he puts pen to paper on a pros and cons list. As hard to believe even for Jason himself, he has thought things through. The implication here is that there are worst things out in this world for Bruce to face, judgement to start, but he still wants him here with him. 

 

 

Tomorrow.

Jason drops down in the opposite seat, crossing his arms across his chest like a petulant child.

"You could've said no."

"And you could've listened to a single thing I've been saying." Bruce answers evenly, not giving an inch and hardly above giving food poisoning to his entire block if just to make sure that everyone is sent to their cells instead of their usual time in the rec room just after lunch.

Jason glares at him from beneath his lashes and a scowl twisting over his mouth.

In the bout of silence that settles between them, Bruce waits and waits and watches as Jason picks at the skin around his nails. The thing about forgiveness is that it never really resolves anything between them. It's a learned process. The truth is always a hard thing to get out, and it is a harder thing to swallow down. The reluctance is palpable when he finally asks. 

"...You like it here?"

Bruce gives him an expression, and it is a complicated one. "I'm not supposed to. That's the whole of point of prison."

"You look content." Jason points out, his own expression a difficult one.

"I'm doing what I need to do."

"You're a selfish bastard, you know that?"

Bruce almost laughs, lines around his eyes as they go wane, and Jason finds himself thinking that the magic might have never been at Robin's fingertips to start. "Jay, I thought you knew that from the start."

Jason's hands curl in on themselves, nails biting crescent moons into skin, hating how warm it makes him feel at _Jay_ alone.

 

 

The day after.

"You're new here."

It's a calculated risk, to approach him at all when Brucie Wayne is a character.

But then again, so is this new guard on the roster. Black hair, blue-green eyes, looking young enough to be inexperienced but bulked out enough to play the role of an enforcer.

He doesn't saunter over, that is much too brazen of a move. Out in the yard where the prisoners roam, it's easy to disappear in the sea of orange, it is just as easy to walk along the outer perimeter and call it stretching his legs when he works a lunge into his exercise routine just close enough to be heard.

"And you're new enough that you haven't learned not to associate with a guard?"

Bruce doesn't exactly scowl but he doesn't not either. In return, Jason gives him a sharp curl of his lips that is unkind. Bruce continues his brisk walk, comes back around for a second time and leans against the fence as he stretches out his hamstrings.

"Don't do anything rash."

"Oh, you know me, B." Jason murmurs under his breath. "When have I ever been _rash_?"

Jason pulls a very nasty leer, and Bruce goes off on a run, wondering how nobody notices how much this new guard resembles the young man that visits him like clockwork every week.

 

 

The days after.

It is an occurrence that becomes a recurrence that becomes a norm.

Bruce sees Jason everywhere.

Sometimes it is guard duty, sometimes it is janitorial duty, and sometimes he finds him in the infirmary looking like he belongs with a clipboard in one hand, a white lab coat over his clothes, and glasses perched on the bridge of his nose as he adjusts the name tag that labels him the physician's assistant.

"So the trick is to land myself in jail so I can see you whenever I want?" Bruce asks as he sits down on the examination table and shows him the back of his hands, and this is so close to a joke that Jason almost takes a physical step back.

Jason scoffs. "The trick is to get your head out of your ass so maybe I can stand to see your damn face once in a while."

Bruce doesn't miss the shadows underneath Jason's eyes as he dips his chin down to look, taking Bruce's hands in his own, running them down one digit at a time to make sure the damage is only skin deep. Bruce can see how he hasn't been taking care of himself, how badly Jason is probably sleeping. But Bruce needs to be fair here, it isn't just about them even if it often feels like it is.

Bruce doesn't cling and Jason doesn't linger but even through the latex of the gloves, Bruce can feel the heat of him bleeding through.

When Jason takes the hydrogen peroxide and cleans off the bloody knuckles that aren't the aftermath of peeling potatoes, he tapes them up so neatly in a way that would make Alfred proud.

Jason isn't gentle but he isn't looking to be cruel either. He even gives him the excuse for him to take the easier way out. "Still being defeated by potatoes?"

Bruce tells the truth easily, and it comes as a surprise to them both. "It was a fight."

They are both selfish to a fault but Jason is learning not to be.

"Oh, so now Brucie fights?" Jason settles for being a little bit incredulous, gives the man this.

"He wins too."

The unspoken truth is that he misses it even if he can't, and Jason isn't about to point that out.

 

Three other botched escape plans later, he talks.

In that stunted stilted way that is all Bruce Wayne.

 

Bruce keeps his head down and keeps out of trouble even if trouble follows him like a stray. Brucie Wayne isn't the biggest or the meanest but he brings something else to the table.

He starts with giving Jason a name.

Because in all the ways he hoped to atone, this definitely never came up as a possibility. Brucie Wayne has a team of lawyers on retainer, _good_ lawyers that aren't state appointed run ragged to the bone. It starts with a man framed for drug trafficking across state lines, one blackmailed into pleading guilty to charges of federal witness intimidation, and then another for illegal possession of a firearm without a license given more than double of the usual two.

It is a very broken justice system out there and neither one of them were ever blind to it. But to see all the ones to end up here on the basis of unfair trials and crooked judges? The list is long, and the work takes just as long when cases are submitted to be reopened on claims of potential error in the proceedings.

But Jason diligently passes on each name to Bruce's lawyers with some very specific instructions to see each case through.

(And if Jason takes care of the dirty officials that can't be touched by the law as Red Hood, well, Bruce doesn't have direct access to the news that isn't filtered through cable censorship to get reports of this kind.)

 

And if Wayne Enterprise offers a program providing employment opportunities to inmates after they are released, well, these men are loyal enough to keep Bruce Wayne's name out of it.

 

 

Year one.

"How did you manage this?"

"I pulled some strings, put some money in some very willing hands." Jason says, shrugging, one hand already going for the hem of his shirt to lift it up and off. "It wasn't hard."

They are in a simple trailer on prison grounds. The amenities are sparse but the message is clear. The double bed that barely fits is hardly meant for sleeping.

"In a rush?" Bruce asks, dialing up the charms to an unbearable level, knows how the flirtatious edge of Brucie Wayne's attitude with life grates against Jason's nerves. "Or just eager?"

"You can say anything and I wouldn't be deterred. You haven't touched me in over a year." Jason points out, reaching over to start on the zipper on that obnoxiously orange jumpsuit. "You couldn't get rid of me even if you tried."

When even death couldn't keep him away for good, there's something to be said.

 

Even if neither one of them will admit to it, it is very much love.

He kills in cold blood in demonstration, and he lets him because it is his way of accepting just that.

Jason goes down on his knees, mouth falling open, tongue pink and soft to say: "Fuck me."

When Bruce reaches out to touch, he is gentle and amused in that way that doesn't feel like a novelty because he's finally left Brucie at the door and this is all Bruce. "Anything else you'd like?"

Jason answers by pulling Bruce's hand to his mouth, traces the rough pads of his fingertips over his lips, dragging spit to shine across the curve of his mouth before drawing them in. He doesn't moan the way Bruce likes or groan the way he himself wants but he makes it clear with his display. He lets go easily enough when Bruce pulls back, replaces his fingers with the blunt head of his cock already leaking and drags his hand through Jason's hair to grasp at the loose strands of black.

"Good boy." Bruce murmurs, pushing into the heat of Jason's mouth, taking it slow with patience that Jason doesn't have.

 

He sucks bruises into his skin, bites the imprint of his teeth into his flesh, and kisses his mouth until his head is spinning and his lips are stinging.

Bruce gets him on the edge of the bed, ass in the air, hands clutching at the sheets, fucking into him until his back is covered in a sheen of sweat. He drives into him, giving him barely no time to recover when he is putting him on his back, a little higher up on the mattress until he can curl his fingers around one hip, the other trailing down Jason's side and noting new scars across this body that he hasn't seen before.

He asks him to tell him, and Jason does.

Spilling every fight and every graze of bullets and knives that came after Bruce's incarceration in between the gasps and the groans and the whines that fill the room.

 

"So how did you sell this to them?"

Bruce asks with Jason lying sprawled over him, chin digging painfully into his sternum but his body burning like a fever wherever they are touching, and they are touching everywhere.

"Take your pick." Jason says with a small yawn, his eyes half-lidded as he pushes closer, tilting his head until his cheek is resting against Bruce's chest. "Brucie Wayne's boy toy, Bruce Wayne's partner, Bruce Wayne's legitimate son."

Bruce doesn't exactly choke on that last one.

"You are a gross old man, B. Conjugal visits can be for family too, children included. It's wholesome really, the point is to preserve the bonds in the family, increase the chances of success in getting back to a life when you get out of here."

"So you did your research but Jason Todd as my son is still legally dead."

"Then isn't it a good thing that you've got three other sons with names that I can drag through mud?"

Jason's grin is wide, all-teeth and glee and downright wicked. Bruce knows that grin well. It is the one he's been waiting for since he drew first blood.

 

 

The years later.

Batman is gone, is dead, is laid to rest as a shadow of a myth people still bring up at turns in conversation within the bowels of Gotham city.

Bruce is done, his reparation still years in the making, and Jason waits with bated breath the entire time with him, and for him.

 

 


End file.
